Keys to good lighting in a showroom
A showroom is a space dedicated to making the most of the products. It is an explicitly focused place to the exhibition where all the details have to show the best of each exposed article. And lighting is a very important element that you have to know how to exploit to show the product in the best conditions and to highlight different scenes in which a product is shown.
In Coblonal Architecture and Interior Design Studio we have worked on different interior design projects . In some of these commissioned works, we have had to design different showroom spaces to better exhibit the exhibited items. In all these, we had to illuminate the place correctly.
From the experience accumulated in these projects, we show you the most important premises to take into account to illuminate a showroom well.
Factors of a showroom lighting
Naturalness or theatricality
The main objective of the design of a showroom is that the user can appreciate the appearance and quality of the different materials and that you can imagine each product as if it were installed in your home. In order to be able to correctly appreciate all the technical and aesthetic characteristics, the ideal would be to achieve lighting that manages to reproduce its characteristics in a real or natural way. For this it is important to contemplate the IRC or chromatic reproduction index. The higher it is, the more fidelity to the actual color characteristics of the product will be achieved. Has it ever happened to you, to see a color in a lighted interior and see a completely different one with natural light? Achieving a high IRC minimizes these differences that can be conflicting in a showroom.
The other alternative, when the color of the products is not decisive, is to opt for a pronounced theatricality that highlights the design of the product as a unique, imposing, exclusive piece. Focused overhead light to discard in the dark, chopped light to enlarge the product.
Balance between general, environmental and focused lighting
A showroom has to be illuminated at a general level so that everyone who enters the premises can see the different products as a whole. In addition, you must have a specific lighting for each product.
It is important to have different scenes that can act together or alternate depending on the needs of commercial discourse. It is important to conceive the illumination of the whole as a kind of route where lighting makes the user turn his eyes towards the product, visualizing a kind of path through which to see other products or even sectoring by ranges. General, environmental and focused lighting is hierarchized in the space so that visually a specific route for the attention of the visitor is described. In this way, it facilitates the task of the commercial or the free wandering of the customers who visit the showroom.
A resource that we have used in our architecture and interior design studio , for the lighting of showrooms is the installation of a longitudinal central rail and crossed lanes for each area in particular. In this way, the user who enters the space can enjoy the harmony of the placement of the different products as a whole and the uniqueness of each item individually.

The color of the lighting to enhance different elements
The tonality of the lighting depends on whether some elements or others are illuminated. In this sense, a warm-orange color light is used regularly to highlight specific products . In this way, the user’s attention is focused on the products exhibited in the showroom. A white light is best suited to illuminate space at a general level . In this way, it is intended to provide light to the place, but without focusing on any specific product.